India Reflections

India reflections

Waiting for my plane to Bangkok, this is the 3rd time Ive been in the Mumbai airport, this time much cleaner. Putting together thoughts as I am about to get on a flight to Bangkok with what appear to be a bunch of British frat boys talking about the price of Thai massages.

If you were fat, ugly, poor, self-contradicting, that’s how you were described.

Tried to write this entry at the Mumbai airport but got accosted by a lonely Swedish stewardess who wanted to tell me all about the astrologer she consulted while on a 20 hour layover in Mumbai. But probably a good thing that it took me a while because now I’ve had a couple of weeks and countries to let my thoughts settle. Should say at the outset that this is based on just 6 whirlwind weeks in a huge land with ancient cultures – these thoughts are the result of subjective superficial surface scratchings!

My first reaction to being in Thailand was “I really wish I was still in India!”. Thailand is great, that was the problem. Thailand has a western vibe, while India is so unique. Not undeveloped, they’ve just moved forward in their own unique way.

The most striking thing about India was the multiple multiple layers to everything. This lead to sensory megaload – like being at a crowded carnival or on a roller coaster, but all the time. Fun, but wow, can it sweep you away. In a town there were so many things going on at once from daily washing to religious rituals, shopkeepers trying to sell a postcard, people tending their animals, music, horns, cooking spices, cow shit, laughing children, and always so much color! There were also multiple layers of symbolism and meaning in every temple – from the layout of the complex to the arrangement of statues, down to the position of the statues’ fingers or the pattern of the tiniest carving around the wall. The same goes for any outfit worn – from the colors to the fabric to the jewelry, shoes, makeup – everything has a meaning. You could look at something, the most obvious example is the Taj Mahal, and marvel at the tiniest of details (like small stone inlay flowers) or the grandest of designs, big and small constantly coexisted. The first thing that we were struck by when eating were the multiple subtle layers of taste – the taste would evolve 6 different times, one flavor giving way to the next as you chewed. Even everyday human interactions – bargaining for a tuk tuk ride - had intricate and numbered layers (economics, social rank, social clout at being seen with a westerner…) that I only began to scratch the surface of.

Another theme I noticed throughout India was the struggle between individuality (usually linked there to the pursuit of money) and community. This is a common conflict for everyone but India is unique because they have such an organized (regimented?) social hierarchy as a background. Many people I talked to felt that, while caste was still very important for social ties, money mattered more. For example, if you were a Brahmin (high caste) you might still work for a lower caste person if the job paid well. What seems to come out of this is a very individual or at most family group/subcaste centered outlook, without a sense of larger societal obligations, nationalism, or national ideology. Many Indians I talked to felt that there was no safety net – that you couldn’t rely on neighbors or strangers passing by to help you out…unless you paid them. There was not much sense of doing something for the societal good – such as obey traffic rules. They also felt that India’s foreign relations were guided more by who they could do business with than whose ideology or political actions they agreed with. On the plus side, this has lead to booming business and development in India and some felt that it had helped them avoid fundamentalism (they like to point out that Indias large Muslim community has not been linked with terrorism or fundamentalist groups).

India was also unique in the ways that old and new coexisted in a most extreme way. Other places Ive been have a similar and consistent level of ‘development’ in their computers, home appliances, infrastructure, etc. In India you could find an internet café with the fastest broadband connection and a manager whose fingers would fly across 10 programs at once, with a dirt floor, generator for light, and water that wasn’t safe to drink. What was mind boggling was that, unlike other countries, India has the money and the smarts to put good water treatment and infrastructure into place, but hasn’t managed it yet.

Now that I’m in Thailand, where women are very bold and prominent, it strikes me how invisible women were in India to me as a traveler. All businesses were run and staffed by men. When I did have a rare chance to interact with women, their lack of education in English (and my lack of education in Hindu!) kept us from saying much. In cases where women did work, they were explicitly expected to do the chores at home. One woman that I met, who ran a small post office (a very rare sight!) said that she had to ask her husband’s permission for every small purchase, even though she was the only one that worked. When I asked women if they thought things would change for them, they acknowledged that the government is just now starting to pass laws about women’s property rights, education rights, etc. but that no one will follow them due to Delhi’s inability to influence what goes on in towns and villages.

One of my favorite things about Indians was their straightforwardness. Yes there were many complex layers to a thing or event, but if you asked someone about them, you’d always get a straight answer. The newspapers were without spin –they did take political sides- but they always just told it like they meant it. If you were fat, ugly, poor, self-contradicting, that’s how you were described. Not out of malice, just out of transparency. If you asked someone what their job was, how much money they made, why they had children (or didn’t), you’d get the straight up answer, without hesitation. These weren’t personal things, just the facts. A couple of people remarked to me that Indians in general do not understand sarcasm – that type of humour just doesn’t exist for them. This is what made exploring the complexities so much fun – all the layers were right there to be peeled back, it just took patience and surrender to the India flow.

So I definitely want to go back sometime. There are some areas (southern temples, northern Himalayas) that I didn’t get to see, but mainly I’d love to stick around in one place and get to know some people better and delve a little deeper into the culture and psyche. And of course I am counting the minutes til I can have fresh roti again.